Friday night in Downtown Brooklyn and the newly opened Brooklyn Basketball Training Center is packed with kids practicing their skills.

The night NY1 dropped by, it was all about dribbling, passing and shooting.

What You Need To Know

The Brooklyn Basketball Training Center opened in October, and hosts youth clinics every weekday for kids ages six to 17 years old

Brooklyn Basketball has teamed up with the city’s Department of Education to host clinics for students in more than 200 schools each year

“It was very rare, being from a rural area, [a] country town, to have this type of thing,” Day’Ron Sharpe said. “And just to see the access these kids have to have is special, I wanted to be a part of it”

“I dribbled with my right hand five times, then I put it through my legs,” said 10-year-old Naji Warlick.

“I do play during gym with my teacher, but I’m not that good,” 13-year-old Khloe Askew said. “I do make a couple shots.”

Brooklyn Basketball head coach Michael Collins runs the programming at the center.

He brings more than 15 years of experience to help grow the game he loves and help kids grow through the game.

“Making sure kids learn resilience through the game, really having to work at something and see incremental improvements over time definitely builds that resilience,” Collins said.

And this night’s clinic was made extra special thanks to a very special guest.

“He has so much aura, like I can feel the aura from so far away,” Askew said.

“Help me out, as an old person, what does that mean when you have so much aura?” NY1 asked.

“Aura is like when you walk in and they can feel like your coolness,” Askew said.

That coolness was emanating from Brooklyn Nets Center, Day’Ron Sharpe, who says he wishes he had a chance to play with the pros when he was a kid growing up in North Carolina.

“It was very rare, being from a rural area, [a] country town, to have this type of thing,” Sharpe said. “And just to see the access these kids have to have is special, I wanted to be a part of it.”

“You spend so much time watching NBA players on TV,” Collins said. “And so many times those kids grow up and you hear the stories about how they remember their first meeting with an NBA player and it invokes [a] sort of success within them, or some sort of confidence within them.”

And while Warlick may already have that confidence, he’ll surely be telling the story of his first interaction with an NBA player for years to come.

“I feel like I want to dunk on him cause, you know, he’s an NBA player — and I’m not, so I gotta dunk on him,” Warlick said.

Then he called Sharpe over and got the chance to take him one-on-one.

Afterwards, Sharpe said, “He’s got a lot of confidence, but I hope he puts in the work, too. He says he loves it, so hope he keeps working at it. Eventually, hopefully, when I’m 50 or something, I’ll see Naji on the court playing for the Brooklyn Nets one day, still talking smack.”